I’m Entitled, You’re Entitled

Here’s a word that didn’t cross Obama’s lips yesterday, thank God: “entitlements.” This ugly bit of lawyerish jargon has become standard American shorthand for what Europeans call social security—public pensions, public provision of health care, income support for the destitute or unemployed, and the like.

The problem is laid out concisely in a crisp Wikipedia entry, which summarizes itself as follows:

An entitlement is a guarantee of access to benefits based on established rights or by legislation. A “right” is itself an entitlement associated with a moral or social principle, such that an “entitlement” is a provision made in accordance with legal framework of a society. Typically, entitlements are laws based on concepts of principle (“rights”) which are themselves based in concepts of social equality or enfranchisement.

In a casual sense, the term “entitlement” refers to a notion or belief that one (or oneself) is deserving of some particular reward or benefit—if given without deeper legal or principled cause, the term is often given with pejorative connotation (e.g. a “sense of entitlement”).

By that first meaning, the wonky one, public education is an entitlement. So is the fire department. So, you might say, are “certain inalienable rights.” Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (to say nothing of freedom of speech and religion) are unquestionably “benefits,” are they not?

That second meaning—the one that packs an emotional punch—is where it all goes wrong. The longest subsection of the “entitlement” Wikipedia entry is headed “Narcissism.” Here’s how it begins:

In clinical psychology and psychiatry, an unrealistic, exaggerated, or rigidly held sense of entitlement may be considered a symptom of narcissistic personality disorder, seen in those who ‘because of early frustrations…arrogate to themselves the right to demand lifelong reimbursement from fate’.

The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal couldn’t have said it better.

I’m not sure exactly when the elementary ameliorations that keep our society from sinking into utter indecency got stuck with this nasty label, but it’s got to have been nigh onto twenty years ago. In the superb recent collection of the letters of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, we find a memo dated January 29, 1993. The Senator from New York is complaining to his majority leader, George Mitchell, about a Clinton cabinet member’s word choice:

This morning, on “The Today Show,” Shalala. To wit “No final decisions have been made, and as you know, if you want to make a serious move on the deficit you have to look at entitlement programs.” (My italics.) Meaning Social Security retirement. This ought to be an outrage coming from a Democratic Secretary of H.H.S. The term entitlement means something for nothing. Exactly what the enemies of social insurance would wish you to believe. In diplomacy it is called “semantic infiltration,” i.e., getting your adversary to start using your terms in a negotiation.

Senator Moynihan, your President has heard you. As for Paul Ryan and John Boehner, they’re just lucky you’re not still around.

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